and in accustoming men to the idea of a single civilization associated with a single government.
Fourth: the transmission of Hellenistic civilization to the Mohammedans, and thence ultimately to
western Europe.
Before considering these influences of Rome, a very brief synopsis of the political history will be
useful.
Alexander's conquests had left the western Mediterranean untouched; it was dominated, at the
beginning of the third century B.C., by two powerful City States, Carthage and Syracuse. In the
first and second Punic Wars ( 264-241 and 218-201), Rome conquered Syracuse and reduced
Carthage to insignificance. During the second century, Rome conquered the Macedonian
monarchies--Egypt, it is true, lingered on as a vassal state until the death of Cleopatra ( 30 B.C.).
Spain was conquered as an incident in the war with Hannibal; France was conquered by Caesar in
the middle of the first century B.C., and England was conquered about a hundred years later. The
frontiers of the Empire, in its great days, were the Rhine and Danube in Europe, the Euphrates in
Asia, and the desert in North Africa.
Roman imperialism was, perhaps, at its best in North Africa (important in Christian history as the
home of Saint Cyprian and Saint Augustine), where large areas, uncultivated before and after
Roman times, were rendered fertile and supported populous cities. The Roman Empire was on the
whole stable and peaceful for over two hundred years, from the accession of Augustus ( 30 B.C.)
until the disasters of the third century.
Meanwhile the constitution of the Roman State had undergone important developments.
Originally, Rome was a small City State, not very unlike those of Greece, especially such as, like
Sparta, did not depend upon foreign commerce. Kings, like those of Homeric Greece, had been
succeeded by an aristocratic republic. Gradually, while the aristocratic element, embodied in the
Senate, remained powerful, democratic elements were added; the resulting compromise was
regarded by Panaetius the Stoic (whose views are reproduced by Polybius and Cicero) as an ideal
combination of monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements. But conquest upset the
precarious balance; it brought immense new wealth to the senatorial class, and, in a slightly lesser
degree, to the "knights," as the upper middle class were called. Italian agriculture, which had been
in the